


The Taste of Justice

by ShakespeareanMusings



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Book-verse mostly, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, One Shot, Other, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16495607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShakespeareanMusings/pseuds/ShakespeareanMusings
Summary: With the Second Battle of Winterfell concluded, a lone wolf roams the desecrated den of his childhood. Memories blurred by his resurrection and conflicting thoughts battling for supremacy, a desire once wished upon a star now serves to only deepen the wounds of grief. Treason has costed him much, too much.And so, justice must be dealt upon those who betrayed. And let it be done, even if the heavens itself fall.





	The Taste of Justice

**Author's Note:**

> Another attempt of an impatient book reader trying to self-satisfy his expactations of TWoW. Naturally, it is completely fanbased and speculation. Btw, I'm searching for a beta to help me improve whatever flaws I have in my repertoire. A single pair of eyes, especially your own, is biased and ineffectual in spotting mistakes. So whoever is up to it, do bump me with a message, and I will cordially engage you.

* * *

**LORD SNOW**

* * *

 

It was not how his youthful memories reminded him of how Winterfell used to be. Grim and grizzled walls still encircled the beaten castle and its premises, Jon’s gloved hand running along their rough skin reassuring him these grey bricks were the same stone curtains he had hid behind when Robb and Theon would hunt him down in one of their boyish little games. The training grounds, a collection of muddled soil and a circle enclosed by a thick rope, formed and stayed the same, back when Ser Rodrik and Jory Cassel whipped the lads into shape. It survived the stern scepter of time and the touch of cruelty when other things didn’t.

There, right where that fallen log lies covered in humus, moss and solid patches of frost would Sansa’s voice ring on so sweetly and break tales with her friends Jeyne and Beth, tittering behind their hands about the latest visiting lordling and sharing songs of knights and damsels. Sweet Arya, young Bran and little Rickon sneaking and snickering about the bushes smudged in dust and grime, crawling fresh out of the bowels of the underground crypts and frightening anyone nearby before Lady Stark could redden their small hands.

Though his heart told him the tales of his childhood, all of their faces were drowned in shadows. Even father’s and Lady Stark’s. A scar left behind by his resurrection. An eon it felt the last time he had seen them. His heart had remembered the love for his family, throbbed for them, burned for them, but no longer did his memories so in equal mass. No longer did their memories comfort him in the darkness he was trying to search a path through, now only serving as another ghost haunting his wake.

Jon was hard-pressed not to let the prickling tears spill. Oh what he would do to have at least one of his siblings back in his arms again, gaze upon their face, feel them warm and alive and remember their content laughter and be reminded of what home felt like. It would be so sweet to see one of them again. Alas, comfort was not meant for him.

The looming towers of the Great Keep, once tall, shadowy and proud in their vigil over the castle now gaped with great naked holes in their bulbous heads, snow filling in the gap at a low, almost uncertain pace, as if winter itself hesitated. Much like himself, Jon thought, the coming winter was desperately trying to heal the wounds of treason and war in its own way, natural and unheeded in its attempt and the only way it knows; burying it in snow.

The builders Jon had requested assured him the bricks would be delivered in time to rebuild all that was destroyed by the Boltons. Scaffolds and cranes, looming avian skeletons perched on frost-covered walls they looked like, were a common sight nowadays around Winterfell, lifting weights too great for the arms of men to do so and placing them like pieces of an askew puzzle. Much was needed to be constructed and Jon was glad for his steward lessons; they helped in leaps concerning the reorganization and reconstruction of a castle the magnitude of Winterfell.

Carts full of bricks and wood, clamoring and rattling as they were brought inside through the portcullis, were dragged and handed out by Northerners of grim and taut faces. Bricklayers were busy trying to mason derelict pieces of the walls who suffered most during the battles, the bricks placed one by one in precise order. Carpenters likewise hammered away on spikes and wooden planks, the clink and clapper all over and spread across the castle, the strum a cacophony, their voices singing the tale of a beaten down home. Winterfell was like a torn tapestry and the bricklayers and carpenters its dressmakers knitting it back together.

The horrors were still freshly imprinted on the lids of the household still. The wounds of Winterfell ran deep. Most of them didn’t scratch the surface but they bled all the same. Fallen bricks, destroyed towers and walls and broken wood could be replaced.

Lives could not.

The snow littered the tousled beards of scurrying manservants, mushing in with the blacks of their hairs and greying their age further even. They were the household members of the castle during Ramsay’s reign over Winterfell Jon had discovered. The most blighted and marred by Bolton hands at their leisure. During the siege, the bastards grew vile in their perverted pleasures. Corpses of flayed men and women hang about, strung up on the noose while trails of blood traveled down their stripped bodies, a view that would make the strongest of stomachs churn in disgust. When Jon stormed the gates and witnessed with his own eyes the suffering of the smallfolk around, his heart clenched as though enclosed by the fingers of a whiter walker, squeezing it slowly tight and digging its dagger-like fingers into the flesh. Those flayed earlier had their exposed flesh frozen by the unforgiving touches of looming winter, and they stood as a macabre reminder to all the passersby that indeed, winter had come. With it, the monsters crawled out of the bowels of the Dreadfort. The Boltons spared no one that plummeted in their fell clutches. Not even children.

It was shuddering to watch. Little could be done to erase that which Roose Bolton and his scourge of a son have done to Jon’s home, try as he might.

_Not your home. Arya’s home. Sansa’s home. Not yours. Never yours._

“Milord? Where to put these stocks?” Jon winced, though it went unnoticed, and kept a mask of ice over his feature to veil his unease. It felt wrong to be called Lord, just as he had imagined. Just as he had thought. It felt utterly wrong, and ludicrous. The urge to say “I’m no Lord.” halted on the cliff of his tongue just barely. But he was, as he was loath to admit. He was acting Lord of Winterfell.

A lifetime ago, it was all he ever wished for, to be a trueborn son of Winterfell and its lord, when bitter daydreams pervaded his soul as Lady Stark grinded into his ears the despised status of a baseborn child with a hiss through her clenched teeth. But now, years after and seeing the cost of it all, Jon would gladly have cut off his arm to have another Stark borne that title. For Jon, now that he was Lord of Winterfell, acting or actual, it made bile rise to his throat. It made him feel like…

_An usurper…_

 “Over there with the other carts. Place them carefully inside, the grains and wheat need to be preserved for the coming winter.” Jon said. Another manservant came just as the first one disappeared.

“The banners of the Boltons have been torn down milord.” Jon nodded.

“Gather and burn them. Let the men enjoy a fire. It’s the best those vile patches of clothe could serve for.”

The aftermath of the Battle of Winterfell was what Jon currently tried to conclude. Stannis Baratheon fell in pitched battle when the Bolton army decided for a sortie, just as Jon rushed in and tried to aid the King in his campaign to free the North of Bolton reign. Jon and the wildings that stood loyal to his cause came too late, Stannis was already surrounded by the Karstark turncloaks, pierced and stabbed again and again when the battle became too thick and the line between friend and foe blurred. The blood of traitors ran deep in Karstark veins, and Jon was, grudging as was to admit it, no stranger to the poisonous stabs of treason to know what it should have felt like.

The mutiny he was subjugated to in Castle Black was a grisly blessing in disguise so to say. When he died, the Lady Melisandre revived him with magics queer to these lands, their cradle the lands of Asshai-by-the-Shadow, home to smoking mountains and charred lands. Jon was acutely aware that the dead rose with iced chips for eyes, hollow of any warmth and rotting flesh dripping off the bones, but Lady Melisandre brought him back with the same grey eyes of his blood, the same eyes he was wont to gaze back into instead of a pair of dirtied pupils of glowing blue. The same soft curly black ringlets cascaded down his shoulders rather than brittle patches of dead locks falling off by a mere wind’s whisper. His flesh was warm, whole and natural, not as though chewed and gorged on by the teeth of wolves. Except for the marks of…

_Others take me… Is that still you roaming in that body? Or do I have to lit you up anyhow?_

Dolorous as he was, Edd always knew his way to brighten his spirit with that skew smile and tainted humor. Even japing about his death did little to make him reel back in a panic. The embrace they shared gave Jon the assurance that he was, indeed, breathing and alive again.

_It’s still me. At least I believe so._

It still felt like grasping at straws. He died and came back again and Jon couldn’t make any sense of it. It utterly eluded him how he came back from the dead. The stab wounds littered across his chest still dully pulsed; angry red and puckered they were no more, but black and tiny gaping maws, ravenous and abyssal, grim proof of what they stood for.

Wounds meant to put a man in the ground for eternity.

Whenever Jon brushed pass a wound during clothe changings, the urge to fight for breath and collapse onto the ground was like fighting an uphill battle. A battle Jon managed to win by the skin of his teeth.

_By the will of R’hllor. You cannot die yet Jon Snow. A great deal you must do before your part in the Lord’s grand scheme is fulfilled._

Now, Jon stood again on the grounds of Winterfell, given a reason to be relieved of his vows to the Night’s Watch and do right by his home.

_Not your home. Rickon’s home. Bran’s home. Not yours. Never yours._

The army that won the battle camped outside the walls of Winterfell. Five to one did the free folks outnumber the Northerners, a source of tumultuous tension that still hang above Mors Umber, Robett Glover, Wyman Manderly or any other notable northern lord, something they gladly grumbled about every time they crossed paths with Jon.

“To think that one day I am to find myself aligned with wildlings of all folks. There is no greater irony to face.” Mors mumbled as Jon entered the courtyard, spared words with the various tenders that shouldered the burden of rebuilding Winterfell, and then noticed the bear of a man glare down at him. Jon had to suppress a roll of his eyes. “Rapers and raiders the lot of them are. And now I find an entire army of them lingering outside the castle.” House Umber held particular distaste for the free folk. Last Hearth was the bastion devoted in keeping at bay the free folk. Generations of fighting made the rift between them a festering wound, and now that Jon had allowed them through the Wall into the lands of his ancestors. He could only guess how the Umbers were feeling. As though he had poured salt and sulfur on their wound.

“My Lord Umber, the free folk helped in the retaking of Winterfell. Their blood have been spilled just as much as those of the Umbers, Glovers, Mormonts and all the other loyal houses of the North that fought in this battle.”

“They are welcome to spill more of their blood.”

Jon disagreed. _Every drop of living blood is a boon these days_.

“What of the King’s and Queen’s body, Lord Umber?” Mors let out a disgruntled snort, thick and dripping with a touch of derision.

“The lot obsessed with flames and burning stakes? They’re cleaned and ready for the pyres.”

“Good. As is their right. They may not have followed the Old Gods, but that does not mean we shall dishonor and deny them the proper service they are due.” Another grumble under the breath was his answer, and Jon began to think he was bartering with an old chagrined hill bear ridden with fleas instead of a northern nobleman.

“You’re a kind boy. But kindness only brings you so far, Jon Snow. Make no mistake, after all this, them flowery knights and lords will be right up yer arse and start demanding yer hairs and nails. Those southrons have been moaning long to us to grovel before their new Queen. Hah! As if I’d bend my knee to that statue! To trade a Lannister cub for this Baratheon fawn? I cannot. And I will not.” They entered the courtyard where many of the castle’s inhabitants were waiting for him, Stannis’ men on one side and the northern nobles on the other.

The Lady Melisandre broached the proper rights of the deceased. Followers of the Lord of Light were ought to be burnt and be consumed by the flames, to return to ashes and be swept away and blow into the embrace of R’hllor. Or so she said. Familiar it was, for the Night’s Watch departed from the deceased the same.

A moon’s turn ago, the woman with hair as scarlet as a bloodriver and her teeth-gnashing King had meant for Jon to bend the knee. To be legitimized as Jon Stark the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North under King Stannis. But merely bending the knee was not the only price. The Godswood would burn as another price for this offer. Jon had adamantly refused for he kept with the Old Gods with staunch loyalty. It was, and will always be, a piece of him, and he was ill at ease in parting with it. Burning the weirwoods, where father one sat under its bright red leaves and bony branches, sharpening Ice with a whetstone and an oilcloth, would have been a gross betrayal to that memory. He could not bring himself to do such a thing, even if on pain of death he couldn’t.  

When the Red Lady crossed his mind, Jon Snow tried to steer clear from her. She was a path very treacherous to tread. At all costs he would avoid her. The Red Woman and her powers of clairvoyance disturbed him greatly. Alas, despite the efforts, Jon was forced to admit; it was a fool’s errand to try and evade the Lady Melisandre and her words of prophecies.

In one of her delirious visions in the flames she once shared back moon turns ago in Castle Black, the lady spoke of treason, of poisoned minds and lurking daggers in the shadows. Jon had unheeded those words in spite of the feeling that they felt laced with a certain sense of truth. But words are wind after all, not at all meaningful until they came true. True they came indeed. So once Jon was brought back from the realm of the dead, through her kiss no less, he regarded the words of Lady Melisandre with renewed caution, wary of anything escaping her lips. Jon was frightened by her, and surreptitiously fascinated as well. Hair kissed by fire, full, impossibly red and plump lips always pulled in that mystifying smile and blazing eyes with an esoteric gloss in them. Jon had every right to be enthralled but mindful of such a beautiful creature.

Jon thought of Ygritte once when the Lady Melisandre crossed his eyes. Nothing in common they held though except for the fiery ringlets, and even that was like comparing a ruby to a carrot, for Ygritte was as an untamed woman, taking what she could and not at all mindful of other voices. Loud and boisterous, Ygritte was every bit kin of the free folk. Tormund once jested that if she had a pecker hanging between her legs, Ygritte would have stolen Jon herself, like the wilding men did their women. Even went as far as telling him he was comelier than his lover. Earned him a solid punch across his red-bearded face once. The Lady of Fire was nothing like Ygritte. She was the silence to her loudness, the calm to her rage. Smooth lace to her rough skins.

Then there was Val. The wildling Jon had reflected as the stunning warrior princess, as fearsome as the tales say of Princess Nymeria and Queen Visenya. Not some willowy creature that brushed her hair in front of a looking glass and waited for her knight to come and rescue her. Val was her own knight. Val was a beauty, aye. But not as the Red Lady though. Melisandre was a different kind of beauty. A dark beauty. A dangerous beauty. A sweet poison. A temptation for the wicked. A magnificent blade, double-edged and treacherous.

Jon shook his head side to side, letting the lights of the clouded sun crease his eyebrows and the snowflakes gathered in his curly locks to fall down. Those were thoughts shoved aside for another moment. The nonce needed his attention, for in front of him stood a different sort of problem altogether that had to be solved.

The entourage of King Stannis Baratheon.

His household knights and Shireen Baratheon were present in Winterfell. Stannis’ host lost heart with the death of their king, and most if not all of the troops once sworn to his cause were now a dejected gathering of men looking left and right for guidance. When a king falls, the burden of leadership passes to either the strong-willed heir or the dutiful queen. Shireen Baratheon was but a child pawing at the edge of adulthood. That left the queen to be considered. And Selyse Baratheon never failed to disappoint. The withered creature caught the Grey Plague at the Nightfort and her fragile disposition proved to be unable to withstand the disease. For a curt moment, Jon reminisced how the late queen once kissed her daughter’s cheek back in Castle Black, the one left unmarred by greyscale. Was it a cruel jest of the Gods? To have her suddenly succumb by the greyscale’s more malicious cousin? While her daughter still lived, though marked and her face scarred as a badge of honor?

 _She is tainted Jon Snow. Be rid of her lest we all catch the stony sickness. I’d much rather die by the blade of a White Walker than slowly lose myself to the madness of that disease._ Val’s words were a warning. They felt like a bad omen For what, Jon was uncertain.

With both of the royal monarchs now dead, the Princess Shireen, was the last living scion of House Baratheon, bar the countless bastards at least. And Jon found himself resolving the cremation of the two most dour monarchs in the vestiges of Westeros, as well as holding somewhat custody over the last trueborn Baratheon claimant to the Iron Throne. He dared not think to put the little girl to the sword. She was an innocent and gentle girl in spite of what the free folk thought of her greyscale, doused as its virulence was.

Before even his sharing grievances and seeing the late king and queen be given to their God’s favor, Ser Axell Florent had started demanding Jon’s hide and flesh for his great-niece to be crowned.

“She is your rightful Queen and Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms. My great-niece is due for what is rightly hers; the Iron Throne and your allegiance. All of you have sworn fealty to her father the late King and as such, by rights of succession, are now honor-bound to keep that fealty extended to her.”

Southrons and their demands… Tedious and always quick to stutter about matters of little of import.

“Be at ease good ser. We will discuss about that in due–”

“What is there to discuss about, Lord Stark? Have I not made it clear already? There is nothing to discuss further, only you and your bannermen bending  the knee to Westeros’ rightful Queen.” Jon’s eyebrows creased as the old knight hissed his words. He was not some dog to be hissed at. But Jon ignored it in favor of the precarious moment.

“There _is_ much to discuss. A great deal Ser Axell I might say. But right now, we should see to it that Their Graces receive the burial they are due. And please, I am not Lord Stark. The King’s legitimization has never been properly formalized by his will. I remain a bastard still.”

“Nothing that showed the opposite, Snow.” Ser Godry sneered with both hands resting atop a sword with its tip sheathed in the earth, standing straight as his blade next to Axell Florent. He was skittish, bouncing on the balls of his feet like some cocksure boy, and from what Jon had recalled of other northerners, eager for a fight to keep himself from boredom. Jon was _this_ close to allow a scowl to form on his countenance and actually give this poor excuse of a knight a good beating, to stretch the scars over his eyebrow and show them he was anything but receivable for sneers and childish crudeness right now.

Many of the knights that rode alongside King Stannis had fallen during the battle for Winterfell, many except for this one, the unsavory knight he was. A good many other men could have stood in his place and Jon wouldn’t have had the need to turn his head in barely veiled vexation every time. Like that smiling knight from Seagard, what was his name, Justin Massey? The good-humored knight yes, a true shame he fell as well during the battle, but Godry Farring and his ilk still lived.

 _True knights follow their kings even into death_ , Jon supposed.

At Castle Black, Jon turned the other cheek at this paltry attempt of getting a rise out of him by Godry Farring once. He would do the same here in Winterfell. Lest he’d shed the blood of a fool playing summer knight when winter was upon them.

Ser Axel Florent and Ser Brus Buckler both flanked the young girl while the new and uncrowned Queen Shireen glanced with downtrodden eyes at the ground, her little body shivering despite the thick black wolfpelt cloak wrapped around her. The pyre for King Stannis Baratheon and his consort Queen Selyse was nothing grand, just a pyre meant for two dead cold bodies. From the short time Jon had walked in the presence of a man as rigid as Stannis Baratheon, he knew him to be a stern and crisp lord, not much for opulence and such nonsense. Stannis Baratheon was all jaws set and gnashing teeth, deep sunken eyes strong enough make grown men squirm in their boots and an air about him that at least told of the regality he was claiming. If only the dark blue in his eyes didn’t betray him and his bloodline, Stannis Baratheon could have passed as a trueborn Stark in Jon’s opinion. He lived as stark as one at least. A grand pyre would have been vacuous. Jon was sure Stannis would have grumbled about it.

Jon lifted a torch just as four knights in service of King Stannis carried his body on a cart, tick iron handgrips resting on their shoulders carrying the weight of a dead king. He was wrapped in the colors of House Baratheon, fine garlands and linens, ostensibly a gift of deference from the Lord Wyman of White Harbor. He was soon followed next by another one carrying his royal consort. All of the people present gave a reverent bow of their heads as the cart passed them. Jon dipped his head, though with less deference than the Baratheon loyalists. Stannis was a king with no throne to Jon. As regal as he presented himself, Stannis was a stag without a crown. A man claiming to be king, but none more so than a mummer during play. Jon held no ill will for the man, he admired and respected Stannis Baratheon as the unchallenged strategist and warrior that he was. But Jon wondered about the truth; is a king as strong as his words? To Jon, a king is only as strong as his kingdom, and Stannis held none to his name.

“My lord? May I have a word?” Jon was surprised as he snapped to attention. The young girl with scars of greyscale tucked at his cloak to gather his attention and stared meaningfully. Never had he heard such a soft and meek voice before.

“What ails you, Your Grace? Are you furs not sufficient enough? The servants can bring you warmer garments if you so wish.” Shireen bowed her little head so demurely her septa would have shed proud tears at the grace. Shireen turned to the bodies of her father and mother being placed upon the pile of firewood.

“Your concerns are heartening, thank you my lord, but I am not discomforted by the cold. I merely wish to put the pyre to flames.” She requested with a whisper, feather light and almost afraid to be heard. Jon demurred.

“Are you certain? I am sure one of the knights are more than willing to do so. I do not wish to presume, but I’m certain no one would think ill of you if you do not do this.” Jon tried to persuade her, but the young Baratheon did not falter. Instead, she determined further, shoulders squared and back straightened, and it was then that a certain strength seeped into her bones and showed itself that Jon didn’t seem to notice earlier.

“Please my lord, I disagree. Do me this kindness. They were my parents. I wish to see them off with my own two hands. A daughter is ought to show strength in the face of her parents.”

The first time Jon had laid his eyes upon the small child, he was convinced she wouldn’t come to see the end of the coming winter. She was of an age the same as Arya and appeared just as scrawny. But Arya was strong, a willful child with no ounce of hanging fat on her body. What weight the youngest Stark girl did have, it was probably all bones, skin, innards and some muscles, but no fat. The Princess Shireen didn’t have muscles nor fat, Jon observed. So that remained bones, skin and innards. Even little Bran after he fell from the tower that dreadful day, sickly and crippled as Jon sadly remembered him last time, would have looked brawny as a giant next to Shireen Baratheon.

Shireen never struck Jon as a strong child, rosy frail and delicate as she looked. If he could see pass through the scars of her girlhood, Jon was convinced Shireen could at least have been a pretty lass, nothing striking but not a hideous sight, pleasant and normal to the eyes of a man of common sense. Alas, only a trained eye and depthless humility could manage that.  How else? Her mother was just as feeble and not quite a sight to behold either. Shrivel and sour-faced, as if the saplings of a lemon tree were planted in her throat, Selyse Baratheon was a frowning crone. Sadly, the blood of Shireen’s father did little to thin out Selyse’s influence. Or so Jon had thought. Now his mind began to regard the little girl in another light. Her Baratheon eyes were pointed and steeled just as she finished speaking. For the barest moment, those blue eyes were not Shireen’s, but a different Baratheon’s. The one with the firmest jawline Jon had ever seen, a cropped beard and a blistering gaze that could have melt Valyrian steel. How could Jon refuse that? He did so once in Castle Black with strenuous effort, and regretted it every passing moment.

“You speak bravely, Your Grace. I can only bid as you ask.” Jon smiled softly and lowered the torch, handing it over to Shireen, who looked so wilted and strained, Jon thought the little girl aged twenty years in just the blink of an eye. A smile that didn’t reach the eyes was sketched on her face as she gratefully thanked Jon when their hands met. Her fingers were like fleshy icicles, cold and hard to the touch. Why had the girl chosen not to wear gloves? Southrons were ill at ease in the North, just as northerners were in the South, falling prone to frostbite as easily as northerners to treachery. Mayhap the cold reminded her that still, some parts of her were not numbed to the point of oblivion. That she still felt an ounce of… something.  

Her stiff legs reached forward, step by step, approaching her parent’s pyre with a burning torch and shoulders so burdened, as if the Gods had tied a pair of boulders to her arms. When the torch touched the pyre, the flames spread without giving quarter, eating the wooden construction dipped in oils with a hunger only seen in starved animals. Selyse was consumed first, the feeble woman, her flesh licked by the searing flames with ease and shrouding her in a black silhouette until she remained no more. As if to mock her languish, her garbs lit up in fire and turned to ashes far more stubbornly than herself, lasting more than seconds before the clothes too were nothing but ashes. Stannis’s flesh was far more dogged than his spouse’s, melting off the bones at a snail’s pace. Even in death, Stannis Baratheon was a man as puissant as he was in life, holding on to his physical form with a stubbornness only the late king could show.

And just like that, they were no more, just two shadows in the crimson flames, ashes on a pyre and soon to be blown away by the winds of winter. The northerners were watching with a sense of wary as it all passed on, Jon alongside them, bemused at this show of queer customs. He was familiar that the Night’s Watch had their tradition of burning the dead out of necessity, not of religious convictions. These people, however, genuinely believed that salvation lied within the flames. Religion could be such a dangerous thing if followed and persuaded by fanatics… The knights following this foreign religion were muttering to their red god in whispered hushes.

“Lord of Light, preserve us from all evil. Bring your loyal servants to your realm of radiance. Yours is the power and glory and the light. R'hllor, fill us with your fire, for the night is dark and cold and full of terrors.”

_The night is indeed dark and cold and full of terrors. If only they knew how painstakingly right they were._

Somewhere, atop of the inner parapets of Winterfell and tucked away in the shades, Jon sensed a pair of scarlet eyes burn on his back. The heat, the intensity, it was unsettling and oh so familiar to Jon, for as his sooty eyes glanced around the courtyard festooned with snow and filled with the grumblings northern lords and chants of fire-obsessed southron knights. They soon crossed with Lady Melisandre’s, a pair of glowing crimson dots lurking in the shadows the castle provided, her presence like a dark specter’s with her thick red robes and her fur-trimmed hood pulled over her head, her mysterious intentions only known by herself.

_When I gaze into the flames, I can see through stone and earth, and find the truth within men's souls. I can speak to kings long dead and children not yet born, and watch the years and seasons flicker past, until the end of days._

_Are your fires never wrong?_

_Never ... though we_ _priests are mortal and sometimes err, mistaking this must come for this may come._

Err she did in the end. She kept heralding for King Stannis Baratheon to be the salvation of the world, Azor Ahai come again, The Prince That Was Promised, the savior who would bring the dawn during the days of the Long Night, wield Lightbringer and vanquish the Others with a swipe of his sword. The very same man now lying on a burning pyre, the skin and flesh on his bone licked away by searing tongues. So who was the unfortunate prince now? The mummer in all her theatricality? Certainly not Stannis Baratheon.

_Snow is what my Lord answered when I beseeched him to give me glimpses of Azor Ahai. To show me the path of enlightenment. The flames spoke to me of Snow. When word reached of your murder, I knew I had to act soon. And so I did. By R’hllor’s will I brought you back from the dead with the last kiss. A kiss meant to be a farewell, but it did not serve as such. The Lord of Light and Life allows for none to be brought back from the dead. None. Unless they have a purpose to serve still._

The pageantry did not drag out fortunately, nor would Jon have stayed if it did for he had other matters to tend to, and soon both northern and southron attenders were dispersing from the courtyard. They acted like crows fluttering away from a carcass pecked clean from its flesh, their interest gone within a blink. None looked too contrite at the whole ordeal, except for young Shireen, the little girl showing barely veiled tokens of grief, glancing with downcast eyes while the flames crisped and cracked and turned her father and mother to ashes, tears staining her pinked cheeks. No sobs wrecked her though. Shireen Baratheon mourned silently. Silent as the grave. Silent as the envoys of the Stranger guiding the deceased to the realm of the dead.

Jon once wondered if the greyscale had even turned her heart to stone at some point by now, for as he glanced down at her forlorn face, it struck him how flawlessly she would fit in a statuary’s corridor, a child in a line of stony sentinels all mottled grey and cold to the touch just like herself. Shireen Baratheon at that moment was truly the scion of the stoic king whose existence was made of cold stone.

The formalities of the nonce were not concluded, and Jon now had to turn himself to a part of the day he was bemused in resolving. The trials. Jon wished for Ghost to pad alongside him right now, to feel his trusted companion’s presence, run his hand over his wet snout, bury his face in his snowy furs and draw much needed strength from his silence. The direwolf was off to the Wolfswood gorging on hares and deers Jon recalled the last time Jon had shared his nocturnal visions with Ghost. He deserved as much. The woods in the New Gift were scarce of any game since the coming of winter, and for Ghost to indulge in the thrill of the hunt was a queer source of strength for Jon, for he felt content how the wolf’s blood would howl at the relishing freedom Winterfell’s great forests bestowed upon his white companion.

The trials of traitors made Jon’s stomach whisk and pull, his mind grasping at memories Jon preferred to bury beneath a pile of endless snow and dirt and never look back to. A hand went to his throat, fingers tracing the faint scar gifted by the treasonous point of a knife that was once wielded by Wick Whittlestick, a man Jon called brother once moon turns ago. _Not me. Not me. Not me. It was not me._

Jon’s hauberk that did little to shield him from Bowen Marsh when he buried his fist into his guts and made him bleed the snow crimson. _For the Watch._

Most of the Night’s Watch held little love for him, he knew that the moment he stepped through the portcullis into the crow’s castle. The bastard raised as a lordling, acting as a lordling and fighting as a lordling. What were rapers and thieves compared to him?

 _Don’t be thinking we don’t know how you think of us, Lord Snow. You would not deign to view us as equals. More like stains on your lordling boots_.

It came as no surprise the amounts of scorn Jon was subjugated to in his early days at the Watch. He befriended some of the black brothers as nights passed. Jon found solace with his fellow young lads whose hands were tied and the only option left was taking the black.

All the contempt Jon knew he was subject off, he took it in stride. Was it moot to think it would lead to their treason? Yes it was. How could envy sway them to murder the Lord Commander they choose of their own volition?

Treason was offtimes borne from jealousy. But not theirs. If only it was envy that incited the mutiny. Jon would have understood that. The paltry group of black brothers, murderers and outcasts from the start, finally succumbing to the foul reputation the Seven Kingdoms always jeered about and giving in to their incessant nature. Murdering their Lord Commander for acting an upstart and allowing the free folk to cross the Wall.

In their eyes, Jon had committed treason of the highest sort. As though he broke their vows. For granting the _enemy_ refuge.

_Born on the wrong side of the Wall is just the same as being born on the wrong side of the blanket. Unwanted and ostracized for your birth, bastards in the eyes of them kneelers cuz we didn’t marry any of the realms. Cuz we are our own realm._

Mance Rayder’s words struck a deep cord in Jon’s heart. Queer as it sounded, his words held meaning. The Free folk were a people, much like the rest of them, not the blight every soul north of the Neck made them to be.

_The free folk and the North are kin Jon Snow. Estranged, yes, but kin all the same. We hold to the Old Gods, descend from the First Men and have fought the Andals, the Others and the Children of the Forest as brothers in arms. Our blood is thicker than mud. You know what changed that? The day you kneelers started building castles and call yourself lord of this rock and master of that pond. The free folk are masters of nary a thing but their own. Not the lands, nor the seas or skies. We’ve kept to the Old Ways. But your people have strayed. Mingling and indulging in those southron tales of twats in shimmering armor and pointy iron chairs polished by arses too fat to fit. Make no mistake Jon Snow, when the free folk call everything south of the wall kneelers and southrons, it’s cuz you’ve become exactly that. Kneelers and southrons._

“Are you getting warm under those furs?” He was clattering his teeth and somewhere put out of sight in the stables, his skin puckered blueish and purple from frostbite. Some parts were lighter in color than others, like he was a canvas of flesh and his skin painted with different dyes all over. _Spearwife’s skin boy. The vile creature made me wear them after he did with them as he pleased and flayed the poor lasses alive. Now they clinch on to me like a reminder of his deeds. A knife buried too deep to remove. It hurts if I try to peel them off._ A part of Mance’s nose was broken off, eaten by the wind’s chilling hunger as well. The former King-beyond-the-Wall was once a doughty man, his presence commanding and strong, but Jon was now hard-pressed to find any semblance of the same man shuddering before him. He was reduced to a mere shell of his former self by the hands of Ramsay Bolton.

“Have you done it yet?” Mance inquired. The question hung heavily in the air, Mance answering Jon’s own question briskly by tightening the furs around his brittle body. Jon knew what he was asking.

“Not yet. First the dead needed tending. Now with that business done, the living will face judgment.”

“The new or the old way?”

“There are more than seven to be sentenced. There is little time for the executioner’s block. The noose will do just fine for all of them.”

“Even for that despicable creature!? Have you gone craven Jon Snow!?” He rasped, anger clearly all over his face, though his voice failed Mance to deliver the point vocally. There was a rise in Mance’s voice, a sudden rise that sounded like sand paper scraping across bark.

“Craven? Cowardice has no part to play here.” Jon came closer, leveled and composed, not rising to the slight of being called craven. “If it’s suffering you’re after Mance, you’re forgetting something. The sword is more clemency than the gallows. Would you rather have yourself beheaded and the moment pass in a blink? Or have yourself throttled until you piss yourself? I showed Janos Slynt, the whimpering toad he was, the mercy of Longclaw, for he was a craven till the end. Mewling and crying for mercy. Had he walked the stairs leading to the noose, he would have died before reaching the gibbet from shitting his guts out. But these men, they’re seasoned killers. Death does not scare them easily so.”

“If not you, let me have his head then! I swear by the Old Gods I will make him feel the steel of a sword!”

“No, he is not yours to sentence. This is my father’s castle, my father’s home. A Stark I may not be in name, but I have his Stark blood. The one who passes the sentence should swing the sword. So the burden shall fall on my shoulders.”

A puff of hot air escaped Mance’s lips as he bristled and turned around, choosing to glare at the ground. Jon took it as his cue to leave the old ranger to his broodings, and made his way to the south gate. With the ceremonial pyres of Stannis still burning and keeping the courtyard occupied, Jon had to move the executions outside the walls of Winterfell. It was Jon’s preference. He did not want to have the traitors besmirch the grounds of his family’s seat further than they did.

The gibbet was already organized and ready when Jon stepped foot outside the south gate, greeted by Cerwyn and Mormont men-at-arms who were just about done placing the standing blocks. The Cerwyns were one of the first, alongside the Dustins and Ryswells, who held their allegiance to the Boltons, and Jon was once very inclined to have every House who held true to Roose Bolton and his treachery to be brought before the noose. Circumstances however made his eyes see the truth of it all. Fear had them in their grasps, and fear breaks even the strongest of men. Fealties are muddled and blurry then. If not for the hostages and threats the Boltons issued across, none would have raised a banner in name of those damned turncloaks. Jon remembered the words of Lady Barbrey Dustin when they walked the halls of Winterfell.

_Fear is like a slithering knife towards your heart, cloaked in shadows and inching forth slowly, leaving you guessing when it would strike. The Boltons choose their words fittingly, Jon Snow; Our blades are sharp. None could install fear like the Boltons._

Leal vassals they may not have been, but their actions Jon understood. And truth be told, they were just as eager to put down the rabid dog Ramsay and his bloodthirsty House.

“The nooses are hanging and the scaffolds are holding. Those traitors can be hanged at a moment’s notice, my lord.” Larence Snow, a bastard hailing from Hornwood, informed him while tying some ropes, tucking at them to see if they held as he said. The Hornwood lad proved his mettle during the Battle of Winterfell. Jon decided to have him stay here until all was sorted out and the North yet again held some semblance of peace and order.

“Have the guards bring forth Ramsay Snow and his lot. Let’s not draw this out longer than necessary.” The young man nodded and darted towards the gate, leaving Jon to his musings.

Ramsay Snow, Arnolf Karstark, his son Cregan Karstark, and the remaining few of Ramsay’s personal men who called themselves the Bastard’s Boys. Those were the men about to be hanged for their crimes. Cregan Karstark was brought with him during his descend from Castle Black. Jon wished for Stannis to have the traitor’s son for leverage, but it seemed meaningless after the king died on the battlefield. Now it was up to him to decide his fate. A couple names Jon wished he could add, but other reasons stayed his hand. Some of his prisoners still held value.

The noise of clattering and swearing soon came upon them as men-at-arms hauled a frenzied Ramsay forth by the pits of his arms.

“Unhand me you fools! I am Ramsay Bolton, the trueborn Lord of the Dreadfort and your liege lord! I will have you flayed alive and skewered for this! You hear!? Flayed and skew–” The sound of flesh hitting flesh followed by a heavy grunt made Jon look at Ramsay Snow. A punch across the face by one of the men-at-arms made the Bolton spit out spittle and a couple of teeth before he wrenched his jaws shut in shock, eyes wide and full of murderous intent. Larence clenched and unclenched his fist and stared with barely concealed disdain of his own at Ramsay. He probably wished it was his own hand that had smacked Ramsay.

“Shut your mouth before any more filth spills from your lips.”

Ramsay was about to continue his tantrum if not for the forceful shove towards the ground. His chains clanked as he crashed to his knees before Jon’s leather boots. His head lifted, and Jon witnessed how a pair of eerily pale eyes, white as the moon’s full form and holding such a sinister glint, dilated in mad glee.

“We meet again, bastard! If my worthless boys were faster in getting and cutting you to pieces, I wouldn’t have to stand for all this madness. Alas, it was not meant to be. Tell me, did you like how I redecorated your father’s castle? All that insipid grey and white was a torture to my eyes, I had to add some tinges of… red to make it more bearable.”

“Save your ravings for the Gods, Ramsay Snow.”

“Bolton! I am Ramsay _Bolton_! Legitimized by royal decree! A noble’s true son! And who are you still!? A damn Snow of the North! But not I! You, a foul bastard, hold no right to cast judgment over a true lord such as myself!”

“Call yourself whatever you wish, kinslayer. Snow, Bolton, it matters little for where you’re going. Patricide is one of the gravest affronts to the Gods, and while I held no love for Roose Bolton, I can understand the darkness of betrayal. Yet, I’d be a liar if I said I feel sympathies for your father, the treasonous snake he was. He got what he was due. And so will you. You have things to answer for, but I will not decide over you and yours. The Gods will decide your punishment, Ramsay Snow. I will merely deliver you to them.”

“You dare!? A mere bastard lording over a trueborn!? I shall have you impaled through your arse when I’m out of these shackles for your impudence, bastard filth!”

“Why you wormy little…”

“Hold Larence. Keep your calm. His words hold little insult. I know what I am. A bastard, aye. You and I are both sons of House Snow. Sons of the North. But unlike him, we will never forget what we are. It will always be a reminder from where we’ve climbed. A fellow bastard once told me to never forget who I am, for surely the world would remind me every waking moment. To make it my strength so it can never be my weakness. And I made it so. Ramsay’s words are nothing more than flimsy knives to my armor now.” The Hornwood lad pursed his lips, mulling and taken aback hearing such weighting words, his face set in awe.

With a gesture to the men, Ramsay was hauled back on his legs. “Get him up the scaffold. And make sure his noose is the tightest.”

Outside the south gate a crowd was starting gather, filling the snow-littered grounds with the frostbitten feet of beggar brothers and crofters, carpenters and bricklayers, washwomen and fishwives, coming from all rhumbs and standing at the road’s side watching. They sneered curses, some even spitting fat dollops for good measure at the ground in contempt as the group of traitors were pulled forth by their shackles. Ramsay, House Bolton and their allies were despised by the smallfolk. And they clearly unleashed their sentiments.

“Damned bastards!”

“Others take you!”

“Let the Gods smite you to pieces for your crimes!”

Young Shireen Baratheon had joined the nobles on the side, her great-uncle Ser Axel and his retinue at fixed attention. Even the normally gaudy Ser Godry Farring watched on silently, solemn and not at all looking pleased, more distracted by the gleaming pommel of his sword and the biting cold of the wind burning his cheeks. All of them had their faces windburned by the icy gusts coming farther from the North. Southrons were so ill equipped for the harsh conditions here, too willowy to withstand the stern touch of Winterfell.

But not Jon. Winterfell was part of his heart, his veins thick with its icy blood, a part of the home he had left such a long time ago when it pushed him away for a final time right into the waters of the uncharted that was the Wall. And then reclaimed him again when its cries of sorrow came to his ears through the taunting letters of Ramsay Snow. When word reached of ‘Arya’ and her forced marriage to that despicable monster. By blood and steel he reconquered the home he had never truly felt welcome in. All for the sake of rescuing his beloved little sister, who turned out to be another conjuring of lies to further spread chaos across the North and cracks through his battered heart. His heart would have went out to Jeyne Poole, to comfort her, to assure her again that some semblance of good had returned to the North, if not for his beaten conscious and worn mind.

Now he was left with a ruined castle haunting his waking moment, rigid as they were. Jon had reclaimed a fortress made of nothing more but snow and stone, each wall turning into the spiteful face of Lady Stark sneering down on him, hissing the words _bastard_ and _you’re not wanted here_ over and over and over again. For what purpose had he reconquered Winterfell? To ensure the remains of a formidable castle would stand tall and ready for the coming of the Others? Or to foolishly try and convince himself that it was the seat of his family? That by right, it had to be restored to its rightful owners? To avenge the desecration of his home? What home? Jon remembered Maester Aemon telling that home is where the heart is; a place to rest your weary head, close your eyes and let yourself be carried away, feel the warmth of safety and love hedge you like the blanket of a marital bed. Jon found none of these here in Winterfell anymore. Only lamenting destitution and cold solitude. Much like in Castle Black.

Fleetingly, a honeyed voice would sometimes purr promises in his ears, like the whispers of an Lysene temptress, seducing him to listen to the wanton coos inside his heart for once and shirk that damnable honor Eddard Stark had left as his only legacy and embrace that what he had fought for.

_You are the last Stark. Shed your guilt and embrace Winterfell as your own. Death has claimed them all. Take what is rightfully yours. Spite them. Spite them **all**. You owe them nothing. Spite **her** and take what she always feared you would take one day. It is yours by right now._

No.

He would not give in to those dark words.

Jon would cling to hope.

_Lady Stark may not have welcomed me, but I will protect Winterfell. It is by duty. Until the day comes when a trueborn Stark walks through the gate, sits at the high table and rules the North as father once did, as Robb would have. I will wait an eon for them, the Gods be my witness. The Starks have endured a thousand years. And they shall endure longer still. I will make sure of it._

Followed by Ramsay Snow were Arnolf and Cregan Karstark, the two who plunged a dagger in King Stannis’ back, a withered old crook named Ben Bones, a scrofulous lump of flesh by the name Yellow Dick, a boyish looking man who the smallfolk especially hissed at called Damon. This man had the nickname ‘Dance-for-Me’ Jon had gathered, for he made people skip on the ground by lashing at their feet with his greasy whip. Followed by this dour-faced man was someone Jon could only describe as a cretin. Sour Alyn was a toothless half-wit, a sack of bones and flesh whipped into shape by Ramsay’s hands, nothing as the Alyn Jon remembered years ago. Those hounds Ramsay kept around were probably more equipped with wits than this drooling creature. The other three, Skinner, Luton and Grunt were men of very little note, all of them portly bandits doing Ramsay’s biddings all the same. They were towed by rough hands towards the standing blocks of the gibbet, some of them whimpering as the noose were fitted around their necks. Despicable cowards…

“This is kinslaying! Kinslaying I tell you! You cannot do this Jon Snow! It is an insult to the Gods to spill the blood of kin and you know it! Look what it did to your brother Robb Stark! I beg of you to stop this madness! Let us take the black and serve the Wall!”

Pleads were the last things Jon had the will to abide to. He had found out that Rickard Karstark’s men were the first alongside the Freys and the Boltons to turn on Robb and murder him at the Red Wedding. They were duplicitous, just like the Lannisters, just like the Freys and just like the Boltons. He held no sympathies for them and their ilk, and was tempted to voice his deep-seated contempt towards the Karstarks if not for the memory of benign Alys Karstark. Jon would have torn down Karhold with his own bloody hands and let the lands be swallowed by the sea for all he cared if not for that innocent girl. They accuse him of kinslaying? Of damnation for spilling blood of his blood? Let him be damned then, Jon will see to it that justice is done regardless, even if the heavens come tumbling down for it.

The others were silent in their mewling, though still a pitiful sight, and Jon had just about enough of it all and decided to get on with it while he had the patience, ushering men to and fro to finish the preparations of the execution.

“If only I had the real Arya Stark in my grasp! Or perhaps your other sister! Heard she was a true beauty unlike that stupid girl I had the North believe to be your little whore of a sister! I would have fucked the Stark blood right out of their cunts! Just like I did that mummer’s girl! Perhaps they’ve already felt the pleasures of–ARGH!?”

Jon was an adamant protester of senseless violence, but even he felt thankful for Larence how he cut off Ramsay Snow’s tongue by slamming a fist into his chin and skewering the foul mouth shut before he could further hurl obscenities at them. Jon clapped the young man on the shoulder and nodded, expressing his gratitude before he turned back to the gibbet.

All them stood bony on their standing block, shuddering in the cold winter winds of the North. Nothing but beggar’s rags were thrown their way to don for their execution. Jon did not give a golden dime about their dignities. He would not clad them in high furs and boiled leathers. He would not allow them dignity.

The somber clouds parted yet beams of bright sunlight did not glare down from the heavens. A dull glim graced the gibbet, grey and forlorn just as the occasion. Each of those ready for the noose had to screw up their eyes, delving them further into their skulls, wary of the brightness even if it was hardly as such. The sun’s radiance was too pure to be shed on the likes of these creatures, even if shining a dull light.

For a spare moment, Jon was reminded of Castle Black and its dreariness, and with it, the moment he hanged the turncloaks who condemned him to death. The memory was a pillar for Jon to lean on for now. It helped him gather the courage to do what he had to do. Again. Unsheathing Longclaw, the sound a sharp song to Jon’s ears, he rested the sword in front of him just like _he_ did once upon a time and recited the judging words he heard Lord Eddard Stark, _father_ , say before an execution.

“In the name of the late Robb of the House Stark, the First of His Name, King in the North and Trident, King of Winter and the First Men and Lord of Winterfell, I, Jon Snow…” He stopped, demurred eyes looking at the ground, before Jon steeled himself and proceeded. “ Half-brother to King Robb, sentence you all to die. Any last words?”

“Mercy oh lord! Have mercy! I regret my transgressions!”

“Please, spare me! I did as I was ordered! I had no part in this!”

 _More of the same it seems_.

Pleading. Begging. Imploring. None of it reached Jon’s heart, for none of their pleas was heartfelt. 

Cruelty held no place in Jon’s heart, so without delaying their deaths further, he swiftly cut through the ropes and listened how Ramsay and the others plummeted with panicked screams to their deaths until the noose turned their wailings to struggled gurgles. _If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die._ Bluer and bluer they turned, hands clawing desperately at the ropes around their throats, some even scratching off their nails and bloodying their fingers.

Jon had beheaded Janos Slynt himself without a flinch. Jon had strung up Bowen Marsh, Wick Whittlestick and the mutineers at Castle Black and he didn’t look away.

And now, Jon looked into a pair of albescent orbs so full of hatred and wrath drowning in a gradual descend towards his death, the madness still lingering like a foul odor from a corpse and Jon eerily wondered if this was a man or a beast in man’s skin.

_Probably the latter. Ramsay Snow was no man of sound conscience. No man could bring himself to do what he has done in the span of his short lifetime. Those followers of the Faith preach of seven hells? Seven hells could not possibly be enough justice for a vile monster such as Ramsay Snow. But the Old Gods are silent in their punishments. None of us know what they would do to us for our transgressions… Mayhap there lies the frightening part… Not knowing…_

Slowly, those Bolton eyes were losing their light, slowly losing their life, draining and draining from a gaping wound. Until it snuffed out. Like a small candlelight in the hour of the wolf.

They went limp, sometimes giving a twitchy kick or a strained whimper, until the life was strangled out of them completely. And Jon hadn’t torn off his eyes from Ramsay’s. Not once the entire time.

**Author's Note:**

> So here we are, yet another TWoW excerpt of a reader(If there is a Jon Snow POV at all in it). This one has been a little bunny hopping around for quite a while. I've been moping around with this one long and hard, debating with myself to either flesh it out into a full story, or put it like this as is, because I'm in the process of writing something else entirely, and I don't want to have multiple WIPS around. So, I thought, why not just post this part as a one-shot, and perhaps come back to it in the future. There are notes lying around for it, but it's more scribbles than concrete ideas. Even if I consider continuing it, It will probably go through an overhaul here and there, because the way it flows is not how I usually would let it, but that's nitpicking on my side.


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